Hit Man - Brian Hughes [58]
Hearns chose to base his camp in Florida before moving to Las Vegas in the final few weeks. Most of his sparring was with a young middleweight named Vinnie Mayes, who supplemented his own boxing earnings with the daily fee of $100 and brought his rugged style to bear. Emanuel Steward instructed Mayes to “let the tiger out of the cage” and he laced Hearns with power-packed body punches for round after round. Apart from avoiding Mayes’s swings, Steward claimed that one of their biggest challenges was avoiding the number of people who tried to offer help and advice. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of people who are calling,” he said. “They include voodoo doctors, an old man who wants to teach Thomas a special punch he claims to have patented in the 1920s, another who has offered a special mixture to soak his hands in, masseurs who believe they hold the key to unleashing his power, hypnotists and nutrition experts.”
On relocating to Vegas, Hearns trained in Ballroom Four of Caesars Palace, a setting that was in stark contrast to the sparse surroundings of Hagler’s chosen base camp. His routine also offered a contrast with his menacing foe. After starting with some light punching on the speedball, he engaged in sparring with Steward, who boxed in a southpaw style to imitate Hagler and allowed Hearns to aim punches at his open palms. Occasionally, Steward would lunge at Hearns and then sprawl forward to leave the impression that he had just attempted a wild swing and nailed nothing but air. Occasionally, he sparred with southpaw middleweights Cecil Pettigrew and Brian Muller and a Kansas City-based light-heavyweight named Charles “Hollywood” Henderson, while Gino Linder, a support member of the team, helped out with a drill designed to strengthen his midsection that involved Linder hitting Hearns repeatedly in the stomach with a medicine ball.
ON THE EVENING of 15 April 1985, a strong wind blew through the tennis courts of Caesars Palace, where the ring had been assembled for the big fight. There were concerns that a storm was brewing and the fifteen thousand fans inside the arena hoped that the gathering cloud didn’t indicate rain; they hoped instead for clouds of war. Bob Arum’s promotional team had dubbed this meeting simply as “The War” and the atmosphere was charged by the time that Hearns, wearing a red robe with yellow trim over his customary gold trunks with his name etched along his waistband in red and the Kronk name along the bottom, had marched into the arena with the strains of “Hail To The Victor,” the Michigan University fight song announcing his arrival. As the challenger, he was obliged to enter the ring first and, as he dispensed with his robe, he looked in splendid physical condition and primed for action.
Customarily, the champion often uses his status as a final psychological ploy and keeps his opponent waiting for as long as possible before deciding to arrive in the ring. Hagler was too eager to taste conflict to engage in this kind of point scoring and as soon as Hearns had entered, John Philip Sousa’s patriotic anthem, “Stars And Stripes Forever” preceded his march into battle. When he stripped from his royal blue robe, his whole body and head gleamed with sweat under the ring’s arc lights. He had thoroughly warmed up in the dressing-room and was ready for a quick start. Hagler did not avert his gaze from Hearns throughout the preliminaries,